Denver May Track Building Energy Use

The Denver City Council’s Safety, Housing, Education and Homelessness subcommittee moved forward with an ordinance that would require commercial and multifamily buildings larger than 25,000 square feet to measure and report energy use, according to Denverite.

The proposal is slated for a vote of the full city council on Dec. 19. The story says that the reporting rules would begin in 2017 for privately owned buildings larger than 50,000 square feet and municipal buildings larger than 25,000 square feet. An online tool from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Energy Star Portfolio Manager, will be used in the program, the site says.

Benchmarking is an increasingly important tool. A study proving this was conducted this summer in New York City by New York University’s Center for Urban Science Progress (CUSP) and Urban Green, which is the New York City chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council. The study assessed the impact of Local Law 84 (LL84), which was promulgated in 2009, which mandated that buildings of 50,000 square feet or more annually report energy and water consumption. It found that simply providing people with insight into their energy use tends to promote efficiency.